Chapter Two - It Doesn''t Say No Parking

"In the sprawling metropolises of 2152, the Parking Enforcement Authority wields power rivaling the megacorporations themselves. Equipped with drone fleets, AI surveillance, and jurisdiction over the most valuable commodity—space—they issue fines that bankrupt families and impound vehicles with surgical precision. No one dares contest their authority; to cross them is to risk social credit annihilation and permanent vehicular exile. In a world of endless expansion, their control over where you stop determines if you can ever go.

Starring AI recreations of Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Scarlett Johansson!"

--Trailer for Post-post-post Cyberpunk movie: the Car Cop, coming to theaters June 2057

***

There was a problem that I hadn''t considered when I bought the Bastion and that was that the damned thing was fucking enormous.

Being big was mostly a feature. It was a transport, and its largeness meant I could fill it with several tons of angry warmech. That was cool as fuck.

What wasn''t as cool was trying to find parking.

"C''mon, there''s not a single open space?" I complained as I flew a third slow circle around the parking building on the edge of the campus.

The CIAL campus was a city. A small one, but a city all the same. It was just to the west of New Montreal, with the Saint-Louis between the campus and the massive metal pillars holding up the plates that New Montreal sat on. There were a few bridges across, and some of New Montreal spilled out on this side of those bridges, but for the most part, the campus was its own thing.

That meant several hundred large buildings set up in neat, corded rows, then a larger, proper campus with a dozen more buildings that couldn''t stick to a single style. They were mostly all glass and steel, with gardens around them and lots of walking space, but some of them were a little more post-post modern, looking like abstract bunkers.

Very cool and all, and probably inspirational to the sheep that went to class in one of those every day, but not at all helpful with my current issue.

"Can we leave the Bastion hovering?" Lucy asked.

"I mean, I guess, but I don''t want to," I said.

Then I shrugged and pulled up and away from the parking building. The roof was covered in cars, which left no room to park in, but mostly I was concerned that the Bastion was a smidge too heavy.

Turning the ship around, I drove it out towards the central campus, then reached out and pulled the lever to unfold the landing legs.

I lowered the ship down gently, and came to a careful landing.

I was pretty sure I''d just parked between a massive library and the school''s administrative building.

Part of me hoped that I wasn''t accidentally sending a message by placing an obviously dangerous vehicle right in front of the skyscraper that served as the school''s admin building, but if they decided to read into it, that was on them.

"Cat!" Lucy complained. "There are paving stones out there. You''ll crack them."

"Huh?" I asked.

Lucy glanced at me from the corner of her eye and grinned.

That... that was my family name, not hers. I glanced away and tried not to allow myself to blush.

"Hi! You''ve got to be Vice Principal Imgreen," she said while extending a hand to shake.

The vice principal shook, then he looked at me, flushed a little, and just bobbed his head in something like a nervous bow. "It''s a pleasure to meet you both. When I heard that there was even the faintest potential for us to have a samurai student, why, I was overjoyed."

"Really?" I asked.

"Of course! It would be the third time in CIAL''s history that an alumni of the university becomes a samurai," he said.

That was... actually, kind of a lot? Samurai weren''t exactly growing on trees. There were maybe a couple million of us on Earth? I wasn''t sure about raw numbers, but for more than one to come from the same school was pretty big. Not like, statistically impossible or anything, but still, a lot.

"That''s cool," I said. "I''ll have to look into them."

"Ah, yes," he replied with a grin that looked as fake as his hair.

The vanguard in question have passed away. The most recent one in 2044. Only one of them was actively a student of this school when they were chosen to become a Vanguard. The other had left the academic lifestyle some time prior and is only considered an alumni post-mortem.

Now that was appropriately dark and kinda fucked up. It was a little weird that it reassured me.

"Please, follow me, I''ll show you around the campus. Ah, you may leave your... vehicle parked where it is, of course. We can assign some campus police to watch over it."

"Nah, that''s fine. It''s got point-defence weapons," I said.

The explanation didn''t seem to reassure the poor guy, and I think that Lucy caught on because she was holding back giggles.

"Anyway, show us this campus of yours. I think Lucy''s interested in your... cooking classes? What''s different about cooking classes at a university compared to like, at a community centre anyway?"

The vice principal''s mouth worked, but he rallied and was soon going on a spiel that I had a hard time caring about.

The things I did for love.

***